THE Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (ARAMCO) pt 2 (merged)

[ReverseEngineer]

It would seem to me that unless the hijackers are the suicidal types willing to scuttle the ship while they are still on board

Bagged it in one. The Somali pirates have often threatened to blow themselves up along with precious cargo if a ransom wasn't coughed up.

If that is the case, and if this is not a set up job with "prepaid" ransom by the CIA, it still doesn't matter, the only difference is you have to write off this particular tanker and its cargo as a loss. That further reinforces the need for all future tankers to be accompanied by a Protection force of US Navy ships, which the House of Saud has to pay for if they want to market their oil to anyone.

You are only talking here maybe a little over a Billion dollar loss here, what is that compared to the trillions being thrown at the banking industry? There is actually a PROFIT to be made in this one using the US Navy as an Ocean Going Protection Racket.

Reverse Engineer

[ROCKMAN]

Thanks Dude for the catch up.

Dude/Doc -- as far as the high recovery factor I would also be suspicious. But I'll pass along one amazing anecdote. Shell Oil had produced an oil field in S La which we eventually bought. I won't go into the log story as to why the kept producing after the water cut reached 99%+ but they did. I drilled two wells through the series of depleted oil reservoirs. It was something to see. The original water sats were around 40%. Calculating the water sats off my new logs essentially yielded 100%. They apparently recovered 90%+ of the OOIP. A few months after we closed a flow line on top of a well head popped a leak and spewed into the bayou all night before someone noticed. Not only was there no pollution but there wasn't even a sheen on the water. I could guess how long they had continued producing a well with 0% oil cut.

But it does show how high a recovery you can achieve if you produce beyond economic limits.

[GoghGoner]

The tanker as dropped anchor off the coast near Eyl. The locals can see it from shore.

I haven't really followed these piracy stories in the past but it seems most of them end peacefully with ransom paid. I just can't imagine the U.S., Britian, and Saudi Arabia (as the director) not attacking on this one.

[Starvid]

Guys, a supertanker is not $100 million.

More like a billion.

More like $125-150 million. Link.

Not exactly complicated designs. Just freaking big.

Huh. Just goes to show what you can accomplish with cheap labour and mass production. I really thought they were much more expensive than that. Imagine, that huge ship goes for the same price as two 6 tonne fighter-bombers.

I think this is a very good example of the fact that the really expensive things in this world is not commodities like oil and steel, but high-tech and skilled manpower.

[eastbay]

These guys have several hundred crewmembers held hostage as well as about a dozen other ships.

Regaining control of the ship would be fairly simple, but doing so would endanger the several hundred hostages.

That's the concern.

The primary objective is ransom. And stealing whatever they can from the ship and crew. Pretty clever scam.

[Dreamtwister]

Regaining control of the ship would be fairly simple, but doing so would endanger the several hundred hostages.

And now we see why they have such a "noble" code of conduct regarding crews. Or should I say "human shields"?

2 million x 50USD/barrel = 100 million ransom just for the oil. The ship might be wroth the same so maybe 200 million ransom.

That's far too much. The ship and cargo are only worth ~$200M, asking for that much in ransom is just begging for a cruise missile.

Remember, these ships are insured. If the ransom comes anywhere near the cost of ship+cargo, it's cheaper for the company to write it off, claim the insurance money, and pass the cost of increased premiums on to the customers.

Smart pirates would ask for something in the neighborhood of $10-20 million. Of course, smart pirates wouldn't bother with an oil tanker in the first place. With prices this low, it's just not worth the risk.

[davep]

And now we see why they have such a "noble" code of conduct regarding crews. Or should I say "human shields"?

Who said anything about it being noble? It's purely an expedient measure to smooth the commercials by their bosses.

Don't forget that these people are generally ex-fishermen (and their children) who lost their livelihoods after the Government collapsed in the early nineties, leaving their territorial waters unguarded. The waters were then over-exploited by European fishing vessels, leaving the locals with no chance of continuing their lower-impact fishing techniques. Stop fucking demonising people.

[Revi]

They use grappling hooks fired from a cannon and hang cargo nets to climb over the side of these ships. Here is an article from the NY Times from about the time they took those tanks. Interesting to hear what the pirates think is going on:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/world ... ?ref=world

They must consider themselves to be like Robin Hood.

[Dreamtwister]

And now we see why they have such a "noble" code of conduct regarding crews. Or should I say "human shields"?

Who said anything about it being noble? It's purely an expedient measure to smooth the commercials by their bosses.

Don't forget that these people are generally ex-fishermen (and their children) who lost their livelihoods after the Government collapsed in the early nineties, leaving their territorial waters unguarded. The waters were then over-exploited by European fishing vessels, leaving the locals with no chance of continuing their lower-impact fishing techniques. Stop farking demonising people.

I'm not demonizing anyone. I am fully aware of why they are doing it. Under similar circumstances, I would do the same thing.

However, that does not change the fact that they are using the crews as human shields.

[Quagmire]

.
The home port of the Somali pirates is now thriving with newfound wealth:

Somali Pirate Port Becomes Boom Town.
and
This from the BBC:

The coastal region of Puntland is booming.
Fancy houses are being built, expensive cars are being bought - all of this in a country that has not had a functioning central government for nearly 20 years.

.

[GASMON]

Every ship in the area around Somaila / Yemen should have two Gurkahs on board, hidden below decks.



God help the pirates.

Gasmon

[Tanada]

Every ship in the area around Somaila / Yemen should have two Gurkahs on board, hidden below decks.

God help the pirates.

Gasmon

That was more or less my thought, pretty soon the ship owners will start putting a few "Sea Marshall's" on as adjunct crew members whose job will be ship security and dealing with borders. If the pirates lose a boarding crew or two they will have a major attitude adjustment. It is one thing to sail out and board a merchant ship that is basically defenseless and make a tidy profit, its a whole nother story if your freind's went out and never came back.

[yesplease]

The problem w/ that sort of retaliation is that the pirates might respond in kind. A billion dollar ship at the bottom of the sea won't do any good for anyone. Something live a cover over the edges of the ship so that pirates couldn't get any purchase w/ grappling hooks/similar would be the best bet IMO, and maybe cheaper than hiring another two crew members in the long run.

[ReverseEngineer]

Reading further on this story, to this point the shipping companies have been resistant to the idea of hiring armed crew, the reason for this being you actually do the work for the Pirates of getting arms aboard.

If you are an armed guard on a Supertanker worth $200M making say $100K a year, it would be pretty tempting to hijack the ship YOURSELF and pilot it to Somalia. Give the local Somali Pirates a piece of the action, they would be your best friends. LOL.

Anyhow, to adequately protect each ship probably takes a good dozen well armed mercenaries, so your security force for each ship is around $1M/yr if you get your Killers on the cheap at $100K a pop. Now it becomes an actuarial analysis. If there are few hijackings and each one only costs you $10M in Ransom, its probably cheaper to just pay the ransom than hire security personnel. Nowadays with hijackings on the increase, you proabably need to buy some security. It will drive up the cost of doing business, no doubt.

The Good Old Days of Piracy are BACK. Unless Oil Tankers and Food Cargo ships are accompanied by military protection, they WILL be Pirated.

Reverse Engineer

Every ship in the area around Somaila / Yemen should have two Gurkahs on board, hidden below decks.



God help the pirates.

Gasmon

[eastbay]

Every ship in the area around Somaila / Yemen should have two Gurkahs on board, hidden below decks.

God help the pirates.

Gasmon

That was more or less my thought, pretty soon the ship owners will start putting a few "Sea Marshall's" on as adjunct crew members whose job will be ship security and dealing with borders. If the pirates lose a boarding crew or two they will have a major attitude adjustment. It is one thing to sail out and board a merchant ship that is basically defenseless and make a tidy profit, its a whole nother story if your freind's went out and never came back.

Passenger aircraft routinely carry armed anti-hijack officers. Why not ships? A handful of armed men and women would deter most of these pirates and do it fairly cheap too!

[Sixstrings]

“Now that they have shown they are able to seize an enormous ship like this, it is beyond a military solution. You won’t fix this without a political solution.”

“Maritime security operations in that area are addressing the symptoms not the causes,”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 183710.ece

Say what? Beyond a military solution? For goodness sakes, the West has fought pirates in days gone by. Some of the US Navy's first successes were anti-pirate campaigns (sing along, the shores of Tripoli..).

My golly, I think we have grown soft. Our military types are saying the military solution doesn't address the "root cause" of piracy. This is not childhood illiteracy here, there are no root causes to be addressed.

A military solution always has been, and always will be the solution to piracy.

It' simple math. Blow enough pirates out of the water, and guess what.. no more pirates.

I really cannot believe that our society "doesn't know what to do" about pirates. Are we completely illiterate of history? It's a problem as old as as the Parthenon, and the solution hasn't changed. Boats in the water. Guns. Sunk ships.

Oh, and here's another solution from the pages of history: when pirates are about, put some bloody defenses on the merchant ships. It's not like these Somalis are cruising around in navy destroyers. Get some armed crew on those ships, and some gun batteries.

The article aslo mentions legal entanglements regarding habeus corpus. Ok. Habeaus corpus for pirates. Am I the only who thinks this is beyond ludicrous?

Argh.

[Quagmire]

.
Somali Pirates Attack 2 More Ships
"Gun-toting buccaneers were reported to have stormed a chemical tanker in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's northern coast, while another group tried to seize a United Nations World Food Programme ship off the coast of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
The attacks, disclosed by the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre, bring the number of hijacks and attempted hijacks off the Somali coast to 69 this year alone.
They came as American warships remain in an armed standoff with pirates who captured the MV Faina, a Ukrainian boat carrying tanks and weapons that was hijacked en route to Kenya on September 25.
The pirate gang's self-styled leader, Sugule Adi, issued an extraordinary threat to blow the ship up and his own men along with it unless they were paid the $20m (£12m) ransom that they have demanded for the 21-strong crew's release.
Speaking to a news agency via a satellite phone, Mr Adi vowed the threat would be carried out by Monday night.
"We held a consultative meeting for more than three hours and decided to blow up the ship and its cargo - us included - if the ship owners did not meet our ransom demand," he said.
The latest drama will add to the growing calls for an international force to patrol the waters off the Somali coast, which have mirrored the country's collapse into lawlessness and civil war over the last two years.
Such is the current risk from piracy that it threatens the entire shipping industry through Suez Canal to the north, which is one of the world's busiest maritime traffic routes and which connects Europe with growing markets in Asia and the Middle East."

Link

They're not saying whether the attempt on the wheat freighter was successful or not.
.

[ColossalContrarian]

Me this should become the official

Another Pritated Ship Thread

CNN

The spate of hijackings underscores a dramatic increase in piracy that has alarmed national governments and shipping companies around the world.

"This is completely unprecedented," said Michael Howlett, assistant director of the International Maritime Bureau in London, which tracks pirate attacks. "We've never seen a situation like this."

The three hijackings reported Tuesday bring to 95 the number of incidents involving pirates and commercial vessels off the East African coast this year -- up from 31 incidents in 2007 and 10 in 2006, Howlett said.

[3aidlillahi]

With the recent spate of piracy incidents and the scant reporting of any global warming activities, I'd like to officially declare GGC dead!



National Pirate Day and the Pirate language application on Facebook take on a whole new meaning now. We're being bred to become Pirate. Notice that Obama is Kenyan, which is next to Somalia. He must be our first Pirate-American and will soon convert us all to Pirate. Look at how he's planning to plunder our treasury (er, booty) to give to his friends (AIG, GM, Goldman Sachs, etc.)

[ReverseEngineer]

The Pirates got still ANOTHER ship, this one bound for Iran with FOOD on board.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 183710.ece

Interesting the cargo, Oil bound for the US, Food bound for the Middle East

Meanwhile, the Navies say they are "Powerless" to stop this. What they are REALLY saying is "Hey! Its not MY job to Police YOUR cargo! PAY ME if you want some Protection!"

Trust me, when the Saudis Pony Up money for the US to take out Somali pirates hitting their Oil Tankers, and Iranians Pony Up money for us to protect Grain Shipments, the US Navy will be HAPPY to blow these Pirates out of the water.

The Somali Pirates are an extension of US policy, like Israel they are playing a part as a Proxy.

If the US Navy wanted to stop the Somali Pirates, they could do so in a heartbeat. They don't WANT to stop them. Instead of stealing directly, we let others do the stealing, then get Protection money to keep the theft from happening. You can even fund your own thieves to make this happen.

This is as old as Al capone and the Rackets in Chicago, just done on a bigger scale.

Reverse Engineer